Influencing Customer Behavior in Service Operations

Abstract

Explores ways in which service firms can influence the behavior of their customers. Drawing from research on employee motivation and applying it to customer motivation, the note describes two levels of managerial control: instrumental control, which shapes behavior through the use of rational incentives, and normative control, which engages human emotions, motivating through the near-universal desire to be perceived in a positive light.

In both the private and public sectors, organizations around the world face increasingly pressing questions about how to stimulate and manage change for long-term environmental, social, and economic sustainability. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the roles of multiplier firms and megaprojects in leading change for sustainability around the world, particularly in the context of the built environment. Multiplier firms are organizations that work with and offer ongoing sustainability solutions to a range of client organizations. Megaprojects are finite-duration initiatives involving multiple diverse entities in the design and delivery of a large-scale development, such as a brand new ecologically sustainable city. Drawing on four illustrative case studies of multiplier firms and megaprojects engaged in sustainability-related initiatives, we also explain the value of learning logic, in contrast to blueprint logic, for leading change for sustainability.

This article proposes that team reflexivity—a deliberate process of discussing team goals, processes, or outcomes—can function as an antidote to team-level biases and errors in decision making. We build on prior work conceptualizing teams as information-processing systems and highlight reflexivity as a critical information-processing activity. Prior research has identified consequential information-processing failures that occur in small groups, such as the failure to discuss privately held relevant information, biased processing of information, and failure to update conclusions when situations change. We propose that team reflexivity reduces the occurrence of information-processing failures by ensuring that teams discuss and assess the implications of team information for team goals, processes, and outcomes. In this article, we present a model of team information-processing failures and remedies involving team reflexivity, and we discuss the conditions under which team reflexivity is and is not likely to facilitate performance.

Confronted with rising costs and patients who often have multiple comorbidities, the orthopaedic surgeon needs to face the challenge of providing high-quality health care. One solution is to increase and improve coordination, communication, and teamwork. The orthopaedic surgeon also needs to work effectively and efficiently to manage a fluid and shifting mix of health-care personnel partners from other disciplines and specialties to deliver high-quality patient care. The orthopaedic surgeon must collaborate in a new way with fellow health-care professionals, providing care by following teaming protocols.